— with the dawn of the feast there may break a dawn that lights up your soul... You hear Gandhi say: Give me your Christ, not your Christianity — and it pains your soul that the gulf should widen between you and the child you worship; and behold, you rouse yourself of a sudden to walk in his footsteps: you love your neighbor as yourself, you meet evil with good; whoever compels you to go one mile, you go with him two. And thus you gladden the Lord of the feast on his feast day.

Truly, humanity today staggers under its burdens, and there is no way to revive it unless reforming souls are mustered with all their strength for reform. Humanity today lays bare its greeds, like a hungry wolf baring its fangs to devour; humanity today seems to have gone back whole generations — back to before the birth of the Lord. In its character there is something of the Romans' cruelty and their hideous pleasures, something of the Greeks' philosophy before they knew God, something of the Hebrews' clinging to a worldly kingdom and wanting nothing else. In it are those very things which the Lord of the feast came to tread underfoot, raising men above them. And it seems to me the world has forgotten the meaning of the feast and the teachings of its Lord, so that nothing remains to it of the feast and its memories but an elegant dress, a sumptuous meal, and a night of dancing.

Humanity today sinks lower and lower, and there is no way to escape the fated end unless souls rise higher, and understand the meaning of the feast; unless hearts are made pure and follow the example of the Lord of the feast in his loftiness and his renunciation.

The feast has come — the feast of the Nazarene child, the carpenter's son who overturned the established order. There is no longer the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; in its place has come the principle: overcome evil with good. There is no longer the law of the sinful woman stoned till she dies, choking beneath the pelting of stones; in its place has come the law of mercy: let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her. People no longer bury their precious things with them, to enjoy them with their embalmed bodies; they have come to labor for their souls and to prepare for another, loftier life — laying up for themselves, when they do good,

treasures in heaven, to find them at the end of the toilsome journey here.

The feast of the child who changed the established order has come. People no longer reckon time from the building of Rome, saying, for instance, "In the fiftieth year from the building of Rome such-and-such occurred"; they have come to reckon from the birth of the child in the grotto of Bethlehem, saying, "In such-and-such a year of the Nativity."

The feast has come. Have you thought of the meaning of the feast,

and have you offered your gifts...? They are not in incense whose fragrance rises, nor in candles lit before an altar; they are not in hymns the lips send up to melt into space, nor in rites performed year after year. The gift that gladdens the Lord of the feast on his feast day is the day a wave of goodness and piety comes over you and you become a creature who lifts his society higher — the day you walk as one member of society by a rule whose substance is this: happiness lies not in taking, but in giving...